Sunday, August 30, 2015

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP: Blu-ray (Pan Arts 1982) Warner Archive Collection

In
Shakespeare’s time, John Irving's fourth novel, The World According to Garp (anexistentialist tragicomedy that
became a publishing phenomenon in in 1978) would have been quaintly referenced
as that proverbial ‘tale told by an
idiot’ – albeit, an extremely articulate and intellectually perplexed and
probing one – though no less ‘full of
sound and fury…signifying nothing.’ Even the mostly respectful book reviews
of the year felt the need to take sides in the arguments as presented by Irving
with terrific irony. Was the novel and the character, T. S. Garp (brilliantly
conceived for the movie by Robin Williams in his film debut) pro- or
anti-feminist; for or against modern marriage? The genius in Irving’s textually
dense ramblings, devoted to this somewhat emasculated fop, chronically
overshadowed by the women (and one surrogate transgender gal) in his life; the
spawn of a demented Margaret Sanger-esque nurse’s biologically, proto-feministic
and highly unorthodox need to procure a child without actually tolerating a
husband; queerly never offered us an opinion – merely a series of vignettes
travelling through various time periods, from which the reader might glean a
variety of perspectives.

The whimsy in
Irving’s apparently ‘straight-forward’ style to concocting his alternative
reality gave it its’ impetus as a bizarre reflection on then contemporary
society; the Ellen James Society being the most perversely acknowledged as a
counterpoint to 70’s radical feminism. Here is a cult of pseudo-militants,
incapable of relating to the world, or perhaps even each other through the gift
of articulate speech; chained to a cause after having their tongues surgically
removed in a thoroughly misguided show of support for a young rape victim –
Ellen James – whose own tongue was removed via her male attacker to keep her
silent. Using this intolerably violent act as their crutch, the ‘society’ –
arguably, comprised of a bunch of man-hating lesbians – perverts one woman’s
grief into a national campaign in order to eradicate masculinity from the earth
– or rather, keep it at bay and away from their cloistered gathering.

As a
reflection of modern American life back then (and its continuing spiral into anarchic
oblivion since), The World According to Garp
remains prophetically disturbing and desolate; the implosion of middle-class
morality, and, escalation of random acts of violence, foreshadowing our present
epoch with eerie and exacting precision, right down to John Lithgow’s Roberta
Muldoon; a transgender former sports celebrity (Caitlyn Jenner, anyone?). As with all great works of literature, Garp’s
purpose – perhaps, somewhat unclear to the rest of us not possessing the author’s
far-reaching vision of a future – was generally misconstrued as densely packed
intellectual ‘clutter’. Nevertheless, it places the reader in the driver’s seat
to formulate opinions about truth and virtue while searching with Garp for a
place of solace within this dystopian nightmare. There is little to deny Jenny
Fields (realized with nonsensical empathy by Glenn Close) her crippling
influence on the natural development of her son’s emotional psyche; a woman so
enamored with marching to the beat of a different drum that she sets about to
reshape the external influences of life itself, and Garp’s in particular, to
assert them as fundamental truths about life and men in general.

Jenny’s
grotesque canonization as a leading figure in the 70’s feminist movement is disquieting. For here is a woman who, by her own rather
unapologetic admission first, to her parents (Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in
the film) – then later, Garp, and finally, anyone else who will listen or read
her ‘tell all’ novel – has cruelly denied her child a father (even a
father-figure, although Roberta does marginally serve as this bridge,
straddling the two sexes); having taken advantage of an unconscious and
brain-damaged technical sergeant while working as a nurse in the military
hospital, simply to harvest his sperm for her own selfish needs. The baby grows
up to be T.S. Garp; ill-equipped and even less likely to investigate the basic
mechanics of what it means to be a man. According the novel and the movie –
ambitiously directed by George Roy Hill – puberty is a curse, as is all male
sexual desire. One cannot escape the natural evolution of the former or stave
off the frustrated urges of the latter. Without a real man to point out the
fundamental truth – that all human beings are dictated by their passions –
cerebral and physical – young Garp’s (James McCall) sex education is extremely
limited to Jenny’s ideas of ‘dirty male
lust’ and reoccurring prepubescent experimentations with the town’s
trollop, Cushie (Jillian Ross as a child/Jenny Wright as an adult). A reprieve
of sorts arrives during Garp’s college years; a chance meeting and instant
infatuation with fellow student, Helen Holm (Mary Beth Hurt).

Garp wants
Helen in the sort of cheaply erotic way Jenny finds disgusting and yet simultaneously
fascinating. Helen, however, is not interested in jocks, something Garp has
since become, thanks in part to his joining the wrestling team against Jenny’s
wishes. She would have preferred him to take up basketball. Locker room shenanigans aside, Garp finds the
company of men – or rather, boys of his years – stimulating. Despite being
attracted to Helen, Garp also continues to see Cushie on the side; Cushie’s
introverted sister, Pooh (Brenda Currin) exposing Garp and Cushie’s love-making
on the grassy knoll to Helen, who thereafter avoids Garp like the plague. In
the meantime, Garp has been working very hard to impress Helen as the writer
she pledges to marry upon graduation. After their breakup, Garp decides to go
to New York and become a real writer to spite her. Unwilling, as yet, to loosen
the maternal yoke, Jenny quits her job as school nurse and moves in with Garp.

During their
initial arrival to the Big Apple, Jenny becomes aware of Garp’s casual glances
directed at a prostitute (Swoozie Kurtz). Partly meant to embarrass Garp, but
also to learn more about his concept of desire – presumably, for which she has
no stomach or extracurricular experience, Jenny is gripped to unearth this
hooker’s particular back story regarding the world’s oldest profession. Mother
and son befriend the reluctant prostitute. Jenny buys her a cup of coffee and
then pays for Garp’s ‘first time’ with a professional. Later, Jenny will offer
the hooker a safe haven at her family’s seaside retreat – converted into a sort
of misfit’s oasis and respite for the socially stunted. But for now, as Jenny
has momentarily retired from nursing, she takes up Garp’s passion to write;
penning the bizarre memoir – Sexual
Suspect. Inadvertently, it becomes a controversial best seller, embraced by
the feminist movement.

Jenny’s
overnight celebrity is an anathema to Garp’s carefully crafted proses; his
first novella – richly supported by publisher, John Wolfe (Peter Michael Goetz)
though receiving little exposure or praise beyond the literati. Garp returns to
Helen and proposes marriage. She accepts, recognizing his talents as a
brilliant writer. Nevertheless, the rest of the world knows Garp only from his
mother’s novel as the ‘bastard son of Jenny Fields’. Garp’s marriage to Helen
is hardly without its hiccups. After giving birth to two sons, Duncan (Nathan
Babcock) and Walt (Ian McGregor), Helen – now a college professor at Reardon
Academy – takes up with one of her graduate students, Michael Milton (Mark
Soper). In the meantime, Jenny has established a sort of feminist refuge on the
sprawling New England compound once owned by her parents, bequeathed to her
after her father’s death. Garp meets ‘Roberta Muldoon’ – a transgender and
devout convert of Jenny’s methodologies. Roberta is empathetic to Garp’s
inability to accept his mother’s constant and controversial meddling in all
their lives. Their unlikely friendship will ultimately ease Garp through some
very tough times ahead.

Having
discovered Helen’s ongoing infidelities with Michael, Garp confronts her over
the telephone, flying into a rage. He takes Duncan and Walt out for dinner and
then a movie to clear his head. But his anger incrementally festers as the
night wears on. Earlier, Garp has illustrated his passion to fly by turning off
the engine of his Packard on the decline leading to their house, allowing
gravity to send the car coasting to an abrupt stop in the family’s
driveway. Now, under the cover of night,
as rain begins to fall, Duncan and Walt implore him to repeat this trick. Alas,
they are unaware Michael has parked his car in the driveway, having coaxed
Helen into performing fellatio on him in the front seat. In the resultant smash
up, Walt is killed and Duncan loses an eye. Later, we learn Helen also bit off
Michael’s penis in the accident, breaking her jaw; Garp cracking his neck and
jaw, having his mouth wired shut for a time. The family retires to Jenny’s
familial home to convalesce. But Garp’s ire remains unabated. Unable to speak,
he nevertheless makes his disgust for Helen known to all, causing Jenny to take
Helen’s side. Roberta comforts Garp.

Sometime
later, Helen and Garp are reconciled; their marital bond strengthened by their
shared grief at having lost a son. They decided to have another child. Garp
writes a politically loaded novel condemning the Ellen James Society. It incurs
the organization’s wrath, but garners him sincere praise from the critics and
an anonymous note of thanks, presumably written by the reclusive rape victim.
Jenny, accompanied by Roberta, leaves for New York to support a woman candidate
(Bette Henritze) running for governor. Regrettably, the outdoor venue is
patronized by a sniper who performs a public execution as Jenny takes the
stage. Garp’s grief turns to scorn when the Ellen Jamesians organize a public
funeral for Jenny meant to exclude him from attending. Roberta helps Garp in a
disguise as a woman in order to partake in the services. But his presence is exposed
by Pooh who has since become a member of the cult.

Spirited away
by Roberta down a back alley to avoid a scene, Garp comes face to face with the
reclusive Ellen James who holds up a copy of his novel, mouthing the words
‘thank you’ for his honesty, before helping Garp escape the militants in hot
pursuit by hurrying him into a waiting taxi. A short while later, we find Garp
has given up writing, having come home to coach the college wrestling team.
Regrettably, Pooh is also on campus. Masquerading as a nurse, she fires several
gun shots into Garp. As Garp is air-lifted by medical helicopter, he quietly
peers out the window at the landscape, turning to a tearful Helen and adding, “Look…I’m flying, Helen. I’m flying.” We
cut away to the image of a happy baby, Garp, being tossed into the air; the
infant joyously smiling now. Is this merely childhood memory unearthed by the
adult Garp as he drifts in and out of consciousness, or a recap meant to mark
his life at its end?

As with most
artists, The World According to Garp
is a far more personal reflection of John Irving’s own heart; an intimate portrait
grafted onto fictional counterparts, the veneer thin and stemming from Irving’s
own obsession to draw a vicarious clarity out of being denied access to his own
birth father. In reality, Irving’s mother never gave up information about his
origins, just as Jenny baits Garp with a single ‘scripted’ story of his
conception that leaves him feeling deflated, yet bursting inside with even more
unanswerable questions. The novel’s view – that sex equates to death or, at the
very least, is a harbinger to all sorts of dissatisfactory and emotional
disfigurement, torturous and cruel – is carried over into the movie;
ambitiously so, given the climate in American movies back in 1982;
screenwriter, Steve Tesich choosing to explore some, if not all, of Irving’s
‘hang-ups’ via Garp’s repeatedly thwarted exploration of his own sexual
feelings – rechristened as ‘lust’ by Jenny – without reprisals. In the novel, Jenny takes the young Garp to
Vienna as an escape from American provincialism. In Austria, she and Garp
encounter the prostitute. For budgetary and logistic reasons, this
intercontinental venue was changed to New York instead. In both cases, this
chance encounter that ought to have expanded Garp’s understanding of sex and
love, is instead usurped and mined by Jenny as a chapter for her memoir, ‘Sexual Suspect’.

Interesting –
and gutsy – of Irving to cast the fictional Jenny Fields as the empathetic
organizer of the Ellen Jamesians – a self-mutilating cult of voiceless women,
protesting the rape of a young woman – when, by her own admission, Jenny has
raped a comatose and dying technical sergeant merely to conceive Garp.
Ultimately, Tesich’s reconstitution of Garp’s marriage to Helen distills what,
in the novel, had been multiple affairs with many singles and other married
couples, into two separate indiscretions; Garp’s seduction of Duncan and
Walt’s teenage babysitter (Sabrina Lee Moore) and Helen’s affair with her graduate
student, Michael. This makes the couple’s later reconciliation more palpable
and convincing; the audience able to excuse a ‘single’ indiscretion on both
sides, recognized by both offending parties as an obvious lapse in judgment,
though just as unlikely to embrace any married couple whose morality and
attitudes toward marriage are laissez faire to non-existent. The inextricable
link between sex and death, even murder, is less darkly drawn in the film than
in the novel; the one exception being Walt dying from injuries sustained in the
car wreck that causes Michael to lose his manhood between Helen’s clenched
teeth after she agrees to fellatio as a parting gesture in their affair. The
movie retains John Irving’s wickedness for combining a macabre sense of the
perverse and silly, but even further lightens this mood by tipping the scales
toward a sort of merciless sardonicism.

It helps that
the novel and the movie are set in the afterglow of the fabulous forties; a
decade then, as yet, untapped in the movies for its sexual explicitness. There is
a great tendency among the young to look upon previous generations,
particularly those in the early half of the 20th century, as
harbingers of a sort of sexless glamor; women of virtue married to men of valor,
everyone doing their part to remain congenially ‘above it all’ where love, lust and sex is concerned. To a large
extent, this common view by the novice has been nurtured via the entertainments
then in vogue; songs professing unrequited kisses left on a pillow and movies
in which a brief interlude of mostly chaste clenches leads to a swift walk down
the isle in a flourish of strewn rose petals and groundswell of underscore to
punctuate the proverbial ‘…and they all
lived happily ever after’ – sleeping in separate beds, preferably, in
separate bedrooms, with one foot firmly planted on the floor. But by 1982, the
American movies’ fairytale about life as a couple had fallen on crasser times;
the graphic nature of sex exorcised in countless ‘love scenes’ that had very
little to do with satisfying our cerebral vestiges for a ‘good time’.

The world, at
least, according to Garp, is misshapen, imperfect, dissatisfying and frequently
harmful. Here is a man unable to find even the remotest satisfaction in most
any relationship he chooses to cultivate; though chiefly, with the women in his
life. Ironic, given his aversion to homosexuality in general, Garp’s most
cherished and enduring friendship is with the transsexual, Roberta – likely
derived from his remembrances of her when she was still a robust footballer,
playing professionally for his favorite team. There are shades of the
buddy/buddy picture at play in the scenes where Garp and Roberta narrowly
escape a psychotic truck driver (Matthew Cowles), whom Garp threatens with a crowbar
after he is caught recklessly speeding through their residential
neighborhood. And later, Roberta and
Garp are seen sharing a game of touch football, engaging Walt and Duncan in an
afternoon’s make-believe of war and conquest, with Roberta as their damsel in
distress. And it is Roberta to whom Garp turns in hours of genuine need; a sincere
comfort after Jenny’s assassination and Garp and Helen’s recovery from their
near-fatal car wreck.

As a novel, The World According to Garp remains
densely packed with scenarios that frequently border on grand guignol; sexual
encounters that end badly or scenarios where women struggle to discover
themselves from under the postmodern feminist fallout, instead frequently find
themselves the victims of an insidiously monolithic patriarchy that even
embraces political assassination to remain in control. Deconstructing the
novel’s stories within stories takes the reader into a complex netherworld of
stumbling social situations and intricately woven character studies, frequently
bleak and often quite horrifying. In the book, the fatalistic nature of its
protagonist is exhaustive and exhausting. The movie is salvaged from becoming a
real downer by screenwriter, Steve Tesich’s refusal to go all the way down this
rabbit hole; also, by Robin Williams’ miraculously restrained performance, void
of his usual need to take over virtually every scene in which he appears.
Instead, we are given a kinder, gentler Garp – still cynical, world-weary and
occasionally imbued with Irving’s sense of animosity toward feminists in
particular and women in general. But on the whole, Williams’ Garp is a probing,
nurturing and soul-searching drifter through life. He discovers his path
through the wilderness of angst, self-pity and regrets; albeit, too late to
truly appreciate all the meandering misfires as part of the learning curve in
the journey gone before it. The intractable nature of Irving’s prose is not so
much reinterpreted by Tesich, but played verbatim like a moving tableau of the
text, with minor artistic license taken along the way.

The movie,
however, lives entirely within its moments, eschewing Irving’s overriding arc
of sublime nihilism. As a movie, The
World According to Garp is director George Roy Hill’s counterculture
folklore to Hollywood’s nationalized whitewash in candy-flossed entertainments.
In increments, it’s grim, sour, and excoriating showbiz. But oh, what a show; the
bits of business appropriately disturbing to their core; odd people do
unsettling things to each other in the spirit of professing to be just normal
Average Joes. Overlapping the ostensibly indivisible chasms of politicking and madness,
the twain frequently runs a parallel course, unexpectedly meeting right down
the middle with nerve-jangling results. As such, The World According to Garp is often wintry and abrasive in its
storytelling, yet always with something relevant to say about the modern
implosion of suburban life.

The Warner
Archive Blu-ray has been remastered in 2k from a newly created interpositive.
The results are impressive but slightly imperfect.Miroslav
Ondrícek’s understated cinematography looks gorgeous for the most part,
although there are still a few obvious hints of age-related damage scattered
throughout this transfer; a speckle here, a fleeting scratch there. The subdued
color palette, particularly during outdoor scenes, has been very accurately
reproduced. Scenes shot indoors under natural lighting conditions tend to adopt
a slightly thicker patina of grain (as they should) but with flesh tones ever
so slightly leaning toward an unnatural orange. Overall, the image is finely detailed and
generally film-like, untouched by unpleasant digital manipulations. But it
doesn’t really impress. Okay, The World
According to Garp is not a movie meant to overwhelm. It’s an earthy, alive
and gritty main stream product that plays more like experimental art house. The
visuals on this Blu-ray support this assessment. Let’s leave it at that. The
original mono audio is presented in 2.0 DTS and is surprisingly robust with
good solid clarity. WAC's Blu-ray is a
first-rate presentation of this tenaciously idiosyncratic story. For those
willing to invest in the tale being told, there are formidable riches to be
mined and treasured forever. Recommended.

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca